1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improvement of a delivered article receiving locker cabinet that is placed at an entrance of a condominium or a tenant building, etc., and that is used for receiving a home delivered article or a delivery from the dry cleaner when the resident of the delivery end is out or in the like situation, so as to allow the resident to receive the article when he or she has come home.
2. Description of the Related Art
A brief explanation will be given of a conventional delivery locker cabinet used for receiving goods such as a home delivered article or a delivery from the dry cleaner. When the delivery end is out, the delivery person operates the ten keys of the delivery locker cabinet to input a room number of the delivery end, empty boxes are displayed on a screen so that the number of a proper empty box is inputted through the ten keys.
Next, when the delivery person puts the article into the specified box, and closes the door, a receipt and a delivery note are issued by a printer; thus, the delivery person receives the receipt, and puts the delivery note into the mail box of the corresponding room number, thereby completing the delivery process.
The receiver of the article, who has found the delivery note put in the mail box, inserts a card that the receiver preliminary received at the time of renting the room into a card reader; thus, the door of the box housing the article is opened, and after taking the article out, the receiver closes the door, thereby completing the receiving process of the article.
Here, each of the delivered article receiving lockers is on-line connected to a managing center, and with respect to the contents of these boxes handled by delivery persons, the managing center manages them so as to know which resident living in which room number has received any delivered article in a condominium or a tenant building, and whether or not the resident has taken the delivered article from the corresponding box.
As a result, in the case when the delivered article has not been taken out by the resident even after a lapse of a predetermined time, the managing center informs the resident of the fact by telephone, etc., so as to ask the resident to take the article.
However, in this conventional method in which: the delivery person only puts the delivered article into the locker through the above-mentioned operation, it is not possible to confirm which delivery service has made the delivery, and, for example, in case where there is an inquiry from a resident to the managing center as to whether or not a specific delivery service has made a delivery, the managing center cannot make a judgment as to whether or not the specific delivery service has actually made the delivery; consequently, the resulting problem is that it is not possible to identify any delivered article.
The present invention has been devised to solve the above-mentioned problems, and its objective is to provide a delivered article receiving locker cabinet in which a barcode reader is used for reading a barcode written on a delivery service attached note attached to a delivered article distributed by a home delivery service and the contents of the barcode are managed by a managing center so that the managing center readily manages delivered articles as to whether or not a specific article has been delivered by a specific delivery service for each of the delivery services.
In order to achieve the above-mentioned objective, the delivered article receiving locker cabinet in accordance with the present invention, which is provided with: a plurality of lockers, each of which is capable of housing a delivered article and is locked, and ten keys by which numbers, such as a room number of a delivery end and a box number, are inputted, is further provided with: a barcode reader, attached to a front face of the box, for reading a barcode written on a delivery service attached note attached to the delivered article, and a memory for storing information read by the barcode reader.
Moreover, it is preferable to provide an arrangement in which a second barcode reader, which is capable of reading the barcode written on a delivery service attached note while being held by the hand, is connected to the barcode reader in parallel with each other.